Dayo Forster
(The Gambia/Kenya)

Although Dayo Forster was born in Banjul , the capital of The Gambia, she has lived abroad since she left home for university at eighteen. She studied statistics and information systems at the London School of Economics, and on completing her doctorate there, moved to live and work in Kenya , first managing data, then people, and now projects.

Forster's background in research and science influences the way she approaches her writing. Narrative structure and how it can be altered is a central theme of hers, as is that of probability. She turned to writing literature late, only starting to write fiction at the age of 35. In her first book, Reading the Ceiling (Simon and Schuster, 2007), she explores the role of chance in a young woman's life and plays with interweaving narrative structures that diverge as a result of an early decision. The novel was short-listed for the 2008 Commonwealth Writer's Prize Best First Book for the Africa Region and was reviewed in several newspapers worldwide. The Financial Times ( UK ) described it as a complex examination of potential futures.

As well as publishing scientific papers in peer reviewed journals, Forster has written articles for the East African , BBC radio and Farafina magazine. She has also published excerpts of her novel in Kwani, and a short story in The Obituary Tango, a Caine Prize anthology. Forster says she writes primarily to understand the world and herself; that by being forced to think through words she aims to tell truths in as engaging a manner as she can.

“I have great hopes for Dayo Forster's debut novel Reading the Ceiling . Her prose spits and crackles. In this era of "brown" fiction in "warm places" - it is refreshing to read a writer who is simply comfortable in varied skins; as people are wont to be. Reading the Ceiling is a novel of blurred worlds and possibilities; of comfort zones upended and thorny terrains soothed; (it) is bold, funny and enlightening. Dayo Forster is a writer to watch.” - Binyavanga Wainaina

Bibliography

Reading the Ceiling, Simon and Schuster, 2007